redbelly wrote:
DBLEXPOSURE wrote:


The motion of the electron about the nucleus is a somewhat controversial
topic. The electron does not move in a continuous path- rather, it seems to
appear in and out of existence, at various points around the nucleus (of
course, 90% of the time the electron can be found in its designated
orbital). It would seem to me the other 10% of the time it must be
somewhere else or become something else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron


I would call those statements (on the part of the wikipedia.org)
misleading. An electron is always SOMEWHERE, but the uncertainty
princeiple prevents us from knowing exactly where the electron is
located. This is quite different than saying it ceases to exist, or is
transformed into something other than an electron.

HTH,

Mark


I thought the idea was that you can know where the
electron is or what direction it is travelling, but
never both at the same time. So (theoretically) you
could know exactly where it is located, which would
lead to it popping in and out of the space under
examination, since the "exactness" restricts the
space to ever smaller observational limits.

It makes it hard as hell to paint the damn things. :-)

Ed